LG's LTE tablet looks to blaze a new path

The muscle-bound Android tablet field is becoming a little bit crowded, but that isn't stopping LG from offering up a beefy new dual-core tablet that's also the company's first LTE-compatible slate.

LG announced it will be introducing its Optimus Pad LTE tablet in Korea soon. The 8.9-inch 1,280x720 True HD IPS display on the Optimus Pad is LG's attempt at blowing up its notable Optimus LTE smartphone into a touch-screen computer.

"With tablets generating five times more traffic than the average smartphone, it's not a huge jump to assume that tablet users need and want faster connectivity," Jong-seok Park, LG's president and CEO, said in a statement.

The LTE version of the Optimus Pad loses a few of the bells and whistles seen on its non-LTE predecessor, however. No more 3D in this speedy descendant. LG has upgraded storage capacity though, with an SD slot that can read cards of up to 32 GB.

LG says the tablet will ship with Android 3.2 Honeycomb and made no mention about upgrading to Ice Cream Sandwich, which makes the Optimus seem less than optimal, but there's apparently some time to work on that before it reaches the United States.